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Security is a serious affair, and so is love So I thought about using one of the security features on Android to surprise my wife on this Valentine’s day.

Wish Happy Valentine’s Day with Android Lock Screen

Do not read any further if you don’t know your partner’s passwords. And the best way to get your partner’s password is to share your passwords with him/her.

Fortunately I know the passwords that my wife uses (thanks to the tip mentioned above).

Next, all the phones/tablets (Android, Windows Phone, iPad, Blackberry) can be setup for remote locate, lock and wipe. That’s one of the first few things that I setup on my devices. So the remote security (Android Device Manager) was setup on my wife’s phone (OnePlus One). The stage was all set for the fun.

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Sometime back I worked on a project which required face detection in the photos uploaded by the user. Yesterday I read about our honorable prime minister Modi ji and BJP are setting selfie booths. This led to the idea of “I am Mufflerman” Try the demo here.

I am Mufflerman

On the demo page, click on the button on the top and upload a selfie (if on a desktop/laptop) or click a selfie if you are browsing the demo on a phone.

Upload a photo which is a selfie. Do not upload a groupfie (more than one person in the photo). The demo does a frontal face detection so look straight into the camera.

I have been wanting to try out NFC tags. What stopped me was the price, availability in India and compatibility with various phones. So just to have fun with tags, I settled down with QR Code and Microsoft tags until recently. Few weeks back, I ordered a pack of 5 NFC tags from eBay India for Rs. 295/- from eBay India.

Recently I faced a task in a project, wherein I was asked to ensure that a script (a PHP script) must be always running, to the extent that if it dies, it must restart immediately.

Though the script was fairly tested to handle error conditions, still there could be a few unforeseen situations . This is because the script fetches data from a third party service provider and also relies on constant connectivity with the service provider for real time data.

Got rid of Windows 7 and installed Windows 8 RTM on my laptop. To get back to work, went right ahead to install Visual Studio and SQL Server.

Installation of Visual Studio 2010 was a breeze but SQL Server 2008 R2 left me with a dreadful error saying – “” is not a valid login or you do not have permission. This showed up during the installation.

By ignoring this error, the installation proceeds but I was unable to login using SQL Server Management Studio.

I bought a Dell Venue Pro, a Windows Phone 7, in February 2011. I broke it’s screen once and went for a replacement. The replacement unit had some issues with the speaker and I got it replaced again. These days the phone is suffering from peculiar battery issues and I may have to replace it’s battery.

Despite these, one thing I can claim proudly is my Dell Venue Pro has always remained updated, till date. It came with a pre-NODO install and I could update it to Mange Beta before the official Mango release. And what’s more, it also got the official Mango release. And just yesterday, I updated my Dell Venue Pro to Tango!

Ever since I started working on my Wildlife photo gallery in Drupal, I have been discovering the power of Views, which I seldom tap in time-bound projects. Here is an interesting trick that I would like to share.

The case is as follows. I have set up a Page using Views that displays photos based on criteria like species, location and type. The Views Page displays the thumbnails of the photos. Each thumbnail is linked to the Node page, which displays a larger photo and its details.

The page looks good and populated when I have lots of photos for each criteria. Unfortunately, in certain cases I do not have more than one photo displayed on the Views page. For example, I have only one photo of most species – since I started Wildlife photography just this year. As a result, the Views Page shows the thumbnail photo of just one species. This requires an extra, unnecessary click for the visitor to go to the Node page to see the larger photo and its details.

Recently I faced this strange issue at a client’s place. Users using Tata Photon USB modem were not able to browse the website and other services, hosted on a server sitting at my client’s office. The client is using a Tata Indicom Broadband connection at the office. The server is sitting behind a pfSense firewall.

To add to the confusion, users using Airtel broadband and Reliance USB modem were able to browse the website. It was easy to blame Tata for this but the culprit (well, more or less) was the pfSense firewall.

Mango is the much awaited update for Windows Phone 7. The Mango update brings 500 new features, over the latest NoDo update. These features include multitasking, E-mail conversation view, Internet Explorer 9, Twittter and Linkedin integration and custom ringtones.

As of now Mango is in beta. The beta update is available to those with a developer account and pretty much limited to certain countries which does not include India. But my Dell Venue Pro bought in India is powered by Mango Beta now! It was earlier running official NoDo update (OS version: 7.0.7390). Following is how I updated my Dell Venue Pro without rooting it, unlocking it and without a developer account.

osTicket is a free online helpdesk/support ticket system. Zimbra Open Source Edition is a free groupware product which offers E-mail, Calendar, Tasks and Chat. Recently for a client I had setup these two products.

Zimbra stores the E-mail users’ credentials in its built-in LDAP server. Hence it made sense to authenticate the login of other services or products like osTicket against Zimbra’s LDAP.

Tethering allows the sharing of a mobile phone’s GPRS/EDGE/3G Internet connection with a PC, typically via USB or Bluetooth/WiFi. Nokia, Andorid and Windows Mobile (before Windows Phone 7) phones support tethering. Most service providers in India have data plans that allow tethering, enabling access to the Internet on laptops while on the move.

In fact, tethering has often come to my rescue where most other ways to connect to the Internet have failed. I blame it on the lack of their availability and/or price. Hence I aptly demand tethering from every phone I own or use. But my latest phone, a Dell Venue Pro (powered by Windows Phone 7), does not support tethering out of the box.

Googling reveals a hack which is repeated across the Web. But the hack never worked on my Dell Venue Pro.